


this is your surrender (this is what they call freedom)

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [34]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Iron Man 2 era, Pepperony - Freeform, just read it guys, natasha's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 05:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: She was sent to watch him.Evaluate him.And handle it, maybe, handle him, if it turned out that the great Tony Stark was not the man his father promised he was going to be.





	this is your surrender (this is what they call freedom)

She was sent to watch him.

To evaluate him.

And to handle it, maybe, handle him, if it turns out that the great Anthony Stark wasn't the man that his father had expected him to be.

 

 

 

She expects to hate him.

That assumption was made before she walks in the door, and it only gets worse when she pushes past those spotless glass doors and comes face to face with Pepper Potts just to be told that Tony was in the boxing ring and that they would have to meet him in there.  "I would like to be polite and offer you a seat,"  Pepper had said, her smile easy and open and not at all strained.  "But we would be waiting for a long time."

Pepper talks to her on the way there.  About Tony, and the merger, and how she was excited to be taking over Stark Industries. How it was good, maybe, to have Stark ( _but she calls him Tony. Tony, she says, all fond and caring and hopelessly in love_ ) regulated simply to engineering.  His mind is magic, Pepper says, and its like she's stating a universal fact of life, in the way that others might say that the sky is blue or gravity is what keeps your feet on the ground.

She's open.  Too open, too trusting, too easy to let others into her life.  The kind of person that takes in strays and is convinced that she's going to be able to fix them even when all the evidence points to the contrary.  It might have been why she was able to put up with Tony so long, but it also something bad.  It makes her a risk, a threat, the loose thread in a carefully staged plan.  Natasha makes a mental note to include it in her report.

There's a stab of envy somewhere, too, over the idea that despite what she has gone through, Pepper isn't look for monsters in every corner.  She doesn't expect every face she sees to peel away, doesn't know that everyone puts on a mask whether they're trying to or not.  It's a lesson that Natasha had to learn much too young, and one that she was reminded of every day.

"I'm sorry."  Pepper pauses at the door, her nails tapping on the glass, and Natasha can see past her to where Stark was, playing around in the boxing ring like he was a school by itching for a fight.  His stance is wrong and he doesn't punch hard enough, maybe because he doesn't know how or maybe because he just doesn't want to hurt this man (Happy, she knew from the file), but either way, its a liability.  "I didn't catch your name."

Pepper didn't know about the monsters.

She didn't know about the masks.

But she would.  Eventually, they all do.

"Natalie,"  Natasha says, and she puts on her best smile, the one that Fury calls her poison smile, the kind that warns you stay away but draws you close just the same.  Or so she's been told.  Natasha doesn't understand the appeal- she just knows that it works.  "Natalie Rushman."

 

 

 

 She watches things.

It's easy to be Natalie, maybe easier than it is to be Natasha, but its also sort of exhausting.

"It feels different.  This one."  She's meeting with Agent Coulson.  He's not her handler, not really, because she hasn't had one of those in a while, and this mission isn't particularly dangerous.  Stark wouldn't kill her, even if he did find out who she is and what she does.  Phil just thinks its good to make her talk.  Sometimes, she even agrees with him.  "Like I'm doing something wrong."

"That a new feeling?"

He says it like its a joke, but there's a bit of judgement there.  Something hiding right behind the eyes, a bitterness lacing the words, turning the edges sharp.  It digs into her skin and if she were anyone other than who she was, Natasha thinks she would have flinched or moved away or maybe even shot her own words right back at him, but as there is, there's nothing- just a tightening of a hand behind her coffee cup, the rubbing of her tongue against the back of her teeth, all these tells and ticks that only Clint has gotten close enough or stayed long enough to notice.

And its not his fault.  That's the worst part of it, when you notice everything, when you can see through everyone.  Sometimes people don't hide things because they're bad people.  Sometimes they hide to keep other people from hurting, or to protect themselves.  Sometimes they hide because they know that the person sitting across from you has killed people with her bare hands on your orders and you're trying really hard not to damn her for it.

And sometimes you just know things -about a hospital on fire, about women drowned in their own bathtubs, about a bullet sent spiraling through the air and blamed on some developing democracy that never stood a chance- and tell yourself that it's wrong to hate people for what they had to do.

"Yeah," Natasha says, because Fury had told her that she needs to trust some people.  Not all the way, but just a part of the way, enough for her to keep ahold of her own skin while she's slipping into all these other people.  Somewhere along the line, Coulson became one of these people.  "It is."

 

 

 _It's just that he cares so much,_ she writes later, in this file going to Fury.  It's more than he's asking for and not what she's supposed to be figuring out, but Natasha cannot stop herself from saying it.  She's defending Tony, is what she's doing, but Natasha finds that she wants to.  So few people have.   _He looks at people and he loves them more than he loves himself, looks at this world and the things that his weapons did to it and saddles the guilt on his shoulders, tries to stretch his arms wide enough to make a safe haven for every person that ever needed a home.  There's not a lot of people in this world that take responsibility like that, like it's up to you to save the universe just because you're the only one who can._

It becomes important, later, that last line, but she doesn't know it at the time.  Important because a portal opens up in the sky and an alien invasion swarm through and someone has to shield New York from the nuclear bomb heading in their direction, and Stark catches that thing on its own back and flies it up into outerspace, is willing to die, has every intention of dying to save all these people that he has never met and only say his name when they need something to hate.

But that's not what its about, then.

At that moment, when she sits in her skyline apartment that the Stark paycheck is paying for, she is only thinking about the way he looks at Pepper.  How blindly he trusts Rhodey, how the tension ebbs out of his shoulders when he has Happy there to guide the way.  She is thinking about targets, about blackmail, about how here is a person more dangerous than anyone she had ever met, because he has the ability to save the world a million times over, the ability to be a true hero, but to be a hero you have to be willing to let the people you love get hurt in the name of the greater good, and even though she doesn't know much about him, she doesn't think he's able to do that.

(She learns she's wrong, but that, too, is not until later.)

 

 

 

She corners Happy.

Her skirt is tugged up higher and she just redid her lipstick in the bathroom, but it doesn't matter, because he's too busy stamping out the cigarette he had sworn to Stark that he doesn't smoke and staring at the sky to keep from looking at her, terrified of coming a shade closer of inappropriate.

(Not that he ever is.  He's a man, and men sometimes do stupid things when they get caught off guard by something he likes, but he knows boundaries.  He knows the meaning of the word no, and seems to understand that silence is not the same as the word yes.  Tony's the same way, and she thinks that's what throws her so far off balance- these are good people, here.  Natasha is not used to dealing with good people on a job.)

"Hey."  She raises an eyebrow.  "Got one to spare?"

"No.  Nope."  He hacks out a cough and the smoke still clings to him, but he keeps lying. Sometimes people cannot help but cling to their delusions, even the small ones.  "That was my last one."

It wasn't.

"You like working here, Happy?"  She leans against the cement wall and feels it scratch at the back of her thighs.  She could probably start wearing longer skirts, if she wanted.  Pepper doesn't let anyone look at her, anyways.  

"Yeah."  He seems surprised by the question.  "Do you not?"

"I do.  But Stark just seems... rude.  To you."  She's trying for sympathy, hoping that he'll let something slip when he's in middle of complaining.  It's worked before, but she can already tell he's a lost cause.  

"No.  Mr. Stark's- Mr. Stark's great, and no offense, but..."  He seems to be warring with what he wants to say and how he thinks he should act, but the need to defend his friend (because they are friends, maybe one of the only ones that Tony's got) wins out.  "You're new here.  So you don't get it."

"Get what?"  She was egging him on just because she wanted to fight.  Sometimes it gets boring, playing this role, speaking this soft and smiling these smiles.  She hasn't punched anyone in a week, and that person was Happy.  "That he's your boss and pays you a lot of money?"

"I owe him.  Everything."  He's started smoking again.  There's three more in the pack.  She wants to steal it from him and she doesn't even smoke.  "I was a janitor before this, at a hospital.  And he was there, passing out Christmas presents to the kids, and I knew he would be, but I thought no big deal, some rich asshole is doing a promo stunt to make up for last weeks headlines, so I just went around business as normal."

"And I had these cards."  He threw the cigarette down and grinded it under his heel, and she knew from the set of his jaw that he would make it three more days before he got another one.  "Cards, for the kids, that me and my sister had made, and it was stupid, but they were happy over them even though I couldn't draw that well.  And he saw me, and he said it was nice, and then he asked if I had a drivers license.  Nothing else, just that, and when I said yes, he asked how much I made."

"And?"

"And he doubled it, so I came here, and got paid vacation days and sick days and health care, and I also have the unique experience of working with a man who really, truly cares about the people he's around.  And some bad shits happened to him, so yeah, I'm going to stick by him, even if he can be an ass.  I just...."  The speech seemed to have knocked the wind out of him.  "I owe him, like I said."

"Right."  Her throat was tight, and she was fighting the urge to cry.  She's never wanted to cry on a job before.  Not until it was over.  But maybe Natalie can be the type of person who sits in the ladies room and cries so softly that no one even notices.  "Right."

 

 

 

He's dying, and no one notices but her.

It's sad.  She registers that its sad in a way that she notices how everything she sees in life is sad, how some kids grow up without parents and how other kids have parents that don't give a damn, how people ruin themselves, how governments don't care and some people have hate in their hearts and no one really knows how to solve the problems, and the people that do know can't stretch themselves far enough to patch up at the holes in the sinking ship the world has become, so Natasha doesn't really let herself care about the fact that Tony's walking through life saying good bye to everyone he knows without them even realizing it.

Though she does feel for him.  Just a bit.  It's why when she walks into that room before his birthday party and sees him stuff his blood toxicity counter back into his coat pocket, she becomes a little less Natalie and a bit more like Natasha, though they've become sort of the same thing.  

"What would you do,"  He says, when she comes over to him, sitting closer than she needs to just because Natasha can't ever really give up on the charade.  "If this was your last birthday party ever?"

"I'd do whatever I wanted,"  She says, and is not sure from the way she says it if she is trying to push Tony closer to her or closer to the moment where he tells Pepper the truth.  She thinks he would be happier, if he told Pepper at least part of the truth.  "With whoever I wanted to do it with."

She says the words like the answer came easy, like she knew, but that was a lie.

Natasha had never been allowed to want _._

 

 

 When things inevitably turn out the way they do (Tony and Rhodey dueling in the suits, glass ceilings shattering, youtube videos going viral and being scrubbed from the internet so fast they're quickly written off as a hoax), it all falls back on her.

"You think a man like that,"  Fury says, waving her report above her head, and Natasha finds herself analyzing her own handwriting, the loop in her y's and the harsh slashes she uses to dot the i's.  "Cares?  About anyone?"

She stays quiet.  It's late, after she calmed all the guests and helped Pepper arrange confidentiality agreements with everyone involved and got Happy to take Pepper home, and now she's sprawled across a booth in a Dairy Queen that was supposed to be closed.  Coulson had made them all blizzards before Fury started yelling, and Natasha can taste the oreos still caked into her molars.  

"He's a liability."  Fury slams his fist down onto the table and Coulson's hand moves to his gun automatically.  Natasha doesn't even flinch, just returns an answering bang by chucking one of her high heels in the general direction of the trash can.  She didn't want to listen to this.  "He's something that needs to be handled."

And yeah, Natasha was expecting that, but suddenly, she didn't want to do it.  She wouldn't do it, she knew, in the same way that Clint must have known that he wasn't going to put an arrow through her eye that night he brought her in.  It's an overwhelming kind of clarity. 

"He does.  But not by me."  Coulson and Fury both fall silent.  It was the first time she ever said no to a job.  Come to think of it, she's not sure she's even allowed to do that.  "By you."

"By me?"  

Fury swivels so he can stare at her and Natasha stares back.

"You can help him."  She lays back down onto the booth, not wanting to see the thoughts play out on their faces.  She tries to leave some people she can still care about.  "Don't pretend like you were going to let Howard's son die."

 

 

_He did it because he's dying.  He did what he did because he cares and doesn't want to hurt them, ever, even with this.  He's cutting the strings so when he finally goes -something that he's going to take into his own hands, soon- they won't grieve._

Natasha stares down at what she had written, knowing that it is true, but also knowing that this will go on record, and a thousand years from now they will be teaching about the great Iron Man in history classes and her words will be quoted in textbooks and be projected on white boards and it won't ever die.  

It only takes her a moment to decide to erase it, and then burn it, make it so it never even existed.

She won't stain his legacy with this.

 

 

In the end, Pepper finds out about everything.

Natasha doesn't think that Tony ever really intended to tell her, but she also knows that he saved her life and said sorry and then they kissed on the rooftop while the firetrucks and ambulances rolled in, so maybe it's okay.

Pepper also found out about her.

"So you're a spy?"  Natasha doesn't want to look, but she does, watches the thoughts roll over her face.  "A,"

 _Killer,_ Natasha reads, and she doesn't flinch this time either, but she does duck her head and let her hair fall over her face.

"Assassin."

"Were you going to kill Tony?"  Pepper demands, her voice gone up a few octaves, and Natasha actually has the nerve to laugh, because she thinks that if she said yes, Pepper would actually try and kill her right here and now, never mind that the most dangerous thing at her disposal was a stapler.

"If I had to."  She doesn't want to lie to her.  Tony would tell her the truth eventually.  That was part of what she wrote in her evaluation of Tony-  _Mr. Stark's security clearance must be put at the same level of Pepper Potts,_ but she doesn't think that anyone's going to listen.  Pepper tends to be the kind of person you underestimate at first and who makes you pay for that mistake later.  "But he turned out to be one of the good guys."

"Well.  Regardless." Pepper sticks her hand out, stiff and formal compared to how readily she would have hugged her just a few days ago.  But that was Natalie Rushman.  This was Natasha.  "Thank you for helping us."

She doesn't take her hand.  "You shouldn't thank me."

"I should," She says, but she lets her hand drop.  "You're one of the good guys too, you know."

 

 

She's filing out the final form, and she's thinking about Pepper.

Mostly about how she said she was one of the good guys, but also about how the night after the fiasco on the racetrack, Natasha had found her sobbing at her desk, and Pepper looked at her with a mascara streaked face and said  _he's going to die just because he doesn't know how to walk away from a fight._ The words had made their way into her report, but it also made her think about how Pepper did not deserve to love a man like this.

Natasha was thinking about other things, too.  About Clint and the first day she met him, how he was the only person who had been able to sneak up on her and she felt that arrow dig into the back of her neck and she had actually been relieved, about monsters born out of pain and trauma and thinking that you have no choice, about that moment where you realize everything that you ever told was a lie.  She thinks about her second chance and how maybe it was better or maybe it was worse, and even if there's not much improvement, she'd still take who she became over who she used to be.

And she thinks about repaying the favor.

 _Iron Man, yes,_ she writes, but she also hands out his only chance at salvation, even if it would make him angry.  Natasha had been right that first day- this time was different.  Tony was one of the good guys, and even though he has everything it takes to be a hero, he doesn't have to be.  Sometimes that makes all the difference.   _Tony Stark no._

(Not, of course, that it matters.  When the world needs saving, Tony Stark would be there, no matter what it cost him.)

(But maybe she knew that, too.)

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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